


War Prize

by Silverskin



Series: Jaeger's Trevails [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Kidnapping, M/M, Monsters, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:47:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21676990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverskin/pseuds/Silverskin
Summary: A young prince falls into enemy hands.
Series: Jaeger's Trevails [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1562680
Comments: 13
Kudos: 16





	War Prize

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure if I've got the grammar of the sailor's slang right, but never mind😕

He had already tested his restraints a good dozen times or more. Grunting, he tried again anyway, straining hard at the rough hempen rope that held his wrists in the small of his back, only to slump down in frustration at another failure. The ship around Jaeger Keraano rumbled, both from the sea and from the feet of busy mariners, all too occupied with sails, oars and rigging to care much for the discomfort of their royal cargo. The tired groan of muffled singing started up from the new team of oarsmen taking over on the deck above. The dull, repetitive tune helping them keep time as their paddles slapped the water. 

_How many days have passed?_

He’d been fed a couple of times by a meek, silent squire. Watered by him too. Slept only in short spells on the bare planks. When needs be, planted on a privy.

Without the sun it was hard to know. 

_Two, perhaps three_

One thing the prince did know for sure though, was where he was being taken. 

Draxx 

The imperial capital out of which so much strife and misery had poured. If he was going there, then his prospects over the coming days looked bleak. Very bleak indeed. For the hundredth time, he dwelt on the only possible reason for his abduction.

_A hostage... for sure... force father’s hand_

The kingdom of Kelastria had not seen such fighting in centuries. This sea-born surprise attack was only the latest in a string of engagements with the armies of the Maghold Imperium and its tyrannical Overlord: Grell Myrog, whose unquenchable lust for land and power had now brought him and his levies to the borders of Jaeger’s homeland. His father, King Drage, was a legendary hero long before this war, and had only enhanced his reputation further by holding off the evil empire for years, far longer than the neighbouring states which had folded under the weight of the Shadow army with a frightening swiftness. His two boys lead his forces into battle this time. 

His heir, crown prince Rhendar, and his younger son… Jaeger. 

Aged only nineteen but already a strong, tall, well-developed young warrior, Jaeger had already fought in a half-dozen smaller skirmishes against the Imperium, but this was his first true battle, and he had taken to it all like a duck to water. 

All around, the beach was in chaos. A swirling dance of swords, axes and men hacked, stabbed and cleaved at each other in the misty morning air, their roars and wails a chorus above a grating clash of metal. At the heart of the melee, stood two clusters of knights, all clad in gleaming silver-guilt armour and ringed by the still-warm bodies of those enemies just slain. Leading one stood a Jaeger, determined-looking, posture practiced and aggressive, ready for more. Given a moment to pause, his eyes met with those of Rhendar leading the other group a few paces away, whose mouth lifted into a wide, open smile before both set to work as their next opponents rushed in.

“HAAA! THAT’S IT LITTLE BROTHER! GET STUCK IN!” the crown prince roared with pride, watching his sibling bring a full-bodied sword swing down on his latest adversary, cleaving through the ugly man’s black chainmail at the shoulder. 

He looked the very picture of heroism, his gently soot-edged blond locks sweeping back from his handsome, angular face as he spun around to deliver another set of ruinous blows to yet more black-clad infantrymen. With enemies falling as easily as all those wooden mannequins he had ruined his father’s tilt yard, Jaeger was flushed with self-confidence. A confidence that blinded him too long to the towering beasts now entering the fray from out of the fog. A dozen trolls, a good nine feet tall, stocky as elephants and clad in thick rusted plates of square iron thundered between the two clusters of knights. Suddenly cut off from his brother and cohorts, Jaeger had his own sworn swords charge the grey monsters, determined to break through. But the Trolls were well prepared for that, six of them lining up to form an impenetrable, club-wielding wall. Every sword swing either bounced off their crude armour with a flash of sparks, or was met with such force from a club swing that it was almost torn from its owner’s hands. On the other side of the line, the trolls fighting Jaeger’s brother seemed strangely hesitant, fighting Rhendar’s nights when they charged but not pushing forward with any attacks of their own.

“MOUNTED ARCHERS! QUICKLY!" Rhendar shouted at a man behind him, determined not to waste their weird hesitancy.

The violent stand-off was bad enough, but it compared weakly to the bloodbath taking place on the other side. Jaeger and his fifteen men had in the space of half a minute been whittled down to just him and six others, and now they too were being bludgeoned. The head of one man ahead of the prince vanished in a spray of brains and bone as a heavy club landed squarely on him and flattened his helmet to the shoulders. The rest fell swiftly, leaving the young prince suddenly horribly isolated. A few seconds of eerie calm descended as the six giants encompassed him in a horseshoe, their flat, tiny-eyed faces peering down on him with blank, unreadable expressions. He wheeled from troll to troll, waiting for an attack, but none came. A second more of silence within the din of battle went by, until finally their stares shifted away from him to a spot over his right shoulder. 

Spinning, Jaeger caught only the briefest glimpse of a bearded, copper-haired man thrusting a sack over his head. Plunged into noisy darkness, he tried to land a blow in his own defence, but the sword was quickly wrenched from his grasp by chunky troll fingers, while two other hands clamped his arms tightly to his sides. They lifted him off his feet like a rag doll, leaving his legs kicking wildly in thin air for a target, but again none was found. A tightening sensation penetrated the chainmail on the back of his knees, the feel of a rope pulling the two joints together to bind them tightly.

“LOOSE!,” Rhendar bellowed to the row of mounted archers at his back, their bows pulled taught and ready. 

A whistle of arrows blew over him, drawing out a chorus of grunts and groans from the towering grey phalanx of beasts as they were speared at all their most vulnerable spots. 

“IN THE FACES! THEIR FACES! ”

Another volley expertly found the gaps of each helmet, making the heads inside rear back in shock on their short, thick necks. One Troll flopped to the ground like a side of beef, having been shot through the eyeball all the way to the brains. The other five were quickly set upon by Rhendar and his guards, who had to hack at their chunky limbs as if they were felling trees. With all of their combined efforts, they took them down, finally clearing a path to relieve the isolated younger prince. Rhendar clambered over the beast’s corpses those two dozen yards to where his brother had been, but instead of finding him and his compatriots, found only a gathering of mutilated dead. His worried eyes swiftly checked each, but none bore the winged stallion Sigel only the men of the royal family wore on their breast plates. As one-on-one sword fights spilled unconsciously into the vacant space, Rhendar scanned all around for some sign of his wayward sibling, bow crinkling, confusion filling his mind. 

“Where...WHERE IS HE?!’ 

He got his answer soon enough, spotting amongst the fighting way off ahead a line of the towering beasts moving away, a trussed-up man slung over the shoulder of the last one. Rhendar rushed forward with his men, intent on a rescue, but the hub of the battle had now swept like a tide right in front of them. Tightly-packed combat twenty men deep stood between him and his brother. He hacked in futile panic at the seemingly unending foes now blocking his path and shoved his own men aside, all the while watching his brother vanishing into the fog with his kidnappers. 

“JAEGEEER!!”

He never heard his echoing name. He was taken. And now, here he was. Stowed in the bowels of a Drummond, hooded and able only to lie there and listen to the hull creaking.

That was until the sound of an opening hatch dragged his thoughts firmly back to the present.

“Shhh, ’ere he is lads,” whispered a man’s voice.

A collection of footfalls followed him on the wooden steps behind him. 

Yanked roughly into a seated position and shoved back against a bulkhead, Jaeger struggled as the hemp sack was pulled off.

“ ‘ello there lad”, muttered a sweaty, weather-beaten oarsman peering down on him, a half-dozen others smiling behind him. 

“Well ain’t you a pretty one” the wiry man grinned, brushing some of the prince’s blond locks from his damp brow with a fingertip. 

Jaeger yanked his head away sharply, his expression boiling with contempt.

“Don’t touch me! You filthy nave!” he spat out, making the oarsman yank his face back towards him hard by the jaw. 

“Nave? NAVE am I?! Ya little shit! This ‘nave’ ‘as done plenty more work in a day than you ‘ave in your pampered little life. If I want to touch you I fuckin’ will.”

His statement had an edge of filth to it.

Besides, it’s not like you can do anythin’ abaat it, is it?” He pointed out sarcastically in his cracked voice, raising sinister grins on the faces of his comrades.

“Far as I know, our marsters just want you alive, ‘Didn’t say you ‘ad to be unspoilt. You see, me and the lads, well, bein’ at sea a lot, and ‘avin no money for whores, we ain’t ‘ad a woman in a loooong time, and I don’t see why we can’t ‘ave some fun wiv a pretty young fella like you before you get delivered.” 

The horrifying truth of what was about to happen dawned on the prince, emphasised by the many fingers busily unstrapping the armour on his lower body. 

“NO! You take your han- mmpphh!” A dirty, calloused palm muffled his loud objections, lest the officers and commanders eating in the stern were to hear them. 

“Shhh now lad, don’t make a fuss, we’ve earned this, and more besides.”

Plates of mirrored steel beamed lamplight onto the walls as his calves and thighs were robbed of their protection, quickly followed by the layer of mail, and thick, arrow-absorbing hemp beneath, until only the soft cotton underclothes remained. 

“Right, get ‘im over”, growled the oarsman, kneeling down as his gang swirled Jaeger around. 

With his hands still bound, his flushed cheek slammed hard against the rough deck as he was planted on his knees with his backside jutting up high. 

“Ooooh, look at this lads... smooth, pert n' creamy,” came his attacker’s judgement of the square, well-trained rump he had unwrapped, his rough-skinned thumbs now pushing his white underclothes down the prince’s hamstrings. 

Still struggling, Jaeger looked back, but instantly wished he hadn’t. Some of the men were already aroused, stroking themselves enthusiastically, impatient to end months of sea-bound celebacy. With a palm still stifling his speech, His darting eyes widened at the feel of a man’s hands parting his buttocks. 

“Mmm, so pert. So fuckin’ full. We’re gunna break you in boy... nice ’n hard” 

Jaeger jolted in reflex as a mouthful of warm saliva was spat purposefully against his vulnerable entrance, while another man tested the firmness of one arse cheek or another with a full-handed slap. 

Two callused fingers rubbed up and down the sensitive pink skin a few times.

"What do ya reccon lads? Shall I warm ‘im up first? Or go straight in wiv me mallet?” 

Dark obscene mutters and gestures passed between the men, who were clearly in no mood to be kind. 

“Mmm, yeah, that’s what I thought too” 

Jaeger’s eyes froze wide. 

The fingers were gone, now something hot and blunt was pressing against him there. The unfamiliar feel of a man’s member, turgid and unyielding in its pressure. Its sexually frustrated owner determined to breach him. The prince moaned an objection loudly into the dirty fingers, his entrance tightening shut as much on instinct by conscious will. Still the pushing came on, a hand gripping the top of his thigh at the hip as the other kept the greasy oarsman’s pulsing sword on course. Zalve’s breath started jumping, blasting from his nose onto the back of the other sailor’s hand. His body was giving way. He couldn’t stop it. An open-mouthed smile began to rising on his attacker’s face. He too could feel that perfect unbroken ring failing on the hot tip of his glans. Just a few seconds more and he would be in. 

“Yeeeah, Nearly there... yea-” 

Motionless silence filled the wooden space. 

The pressure halted, Jaeger looked back to find a frozen shock on the oarsman’s face. A glinting steel knife rested feather-light against his neck. The other men shrank away into the walls, seemingly hoping that the shadows would give them protection from the figure wielding the blade. 

“I hope for your sake... you know how to grow a new cock... I might be having yours” 

Growled a drawn-out threat into the near-rapist’s ear. 

A red beard, shorn tight to the jaw, and short, copper hair, shaved fiercely at the back and sides.

It was the same man who had led Jaeger’s abductors on the beach. With the flat of his blade he lifted his inferior up by the chin. 

“We’re taking him to the Shadow Keep… do you understand what that means?” he asked in an unnervingly calm, light tone, barely above a whisper. All the while burning the man’s eyeballs with a death glare. 

“It means that he’s for the Overlord. The Overlord. Not you.” 

The _you_ came out dipped in contempt.

The shaking sailor gulped dryly, trying to tear his wide eyes away from that torturing stare. 

“Do you think... I intend to present him... spattered from head to toe... in your FILTHY FUCKING CUM!?” 

A hard, steel gauntlet to the face followed the roar, sending the swarthy sea dog cartwheeling away. 

“GET. OUT. OF. MY. FUCKING. SIGHT!” 

All seemed to dissolve in a panic, some stumbling up the steps, others through doors and passages. Clumsily stuffing their retreating members back in their pants. Only the now familiar diminutive squire remained, peering meekly around his lord’s side. 

“Clean him up, and put his armour back on. There must be no signs of... tampering.” 

The sentence trailed away as he looked the dishevelled, half-naked prince up and down with uncomfortable contempt, before marching from the cabin.  
Once the squire’s shaky hands had wiped the grubby fingerprints from his face, nervously cleaned his spit-spattered rear and re-clad him, the rest of the voyage had proved mercifully uneventful. He’d been moved to a lower deck, nearer the officer’s quarters and away from the sex-starved crew’s wandering hands, with only the odd bitter look from a passing sailor to contend with before the ship reached its destination. 

Held under the elbows and Frog-marched across the deck by two burly soldiers, a pause at the busy gang plank gave the prince a moment to take in the Imperial city in all its haunting glory. It was a cold evening, and just like at the beach days earlier, a still sea fog lay over everything. But for those nearest the docks, all the building lay cloaked, only serving to emphasise the one structure it was impossible for the weather to hide. Sitting in the middle of the city on a rocky plateau, the Shadow Keep loomed, floating on a bed of miasma. The gargantuan cube of jet-black granite stood silhouetted against the sunset, its corners rounded by long thin turrets, and with tiny windows peppering its near-flawless walls. In odd contrast to the dour, forbidding architecture of the fortress, a cluster of little golden onion domes could just be seen in the middle of its flat, field-sized rooftop, glinting above the billowing mass of multi-coloured awnings wrapped around them. Atop the highest dome in the centre, a huge Burgundy banner emblazoned with Grell Myrog’s now-infamous crest, the tree of snakes, flapped slow and long on the breeze. A second before being shoved hard onto the plank, Jaeger spotted the tiny ant-like human forms milling about up there.

The young prince jostled and shook in the cart they had flung him in. Donkey-drawn, it weaved its way noisily through the tight cobblestone streets, its passenger in his bright, silvery armour drawing curious, nervous looks from many a busy slave and his master. They were a retched looking bunch, a small wooden board hung around their necks with the mark of their owners, who themselves looked little better. All clothed in dull brown and black fabrics, the men short and hunched, even the younger ones. The years spent living in this evil-haggard city making them prematurely decrepit, while the meek twitchy women hid half their faces with their shawls as they scurried aside to avoid the mounted escort, headed by the red-bearded General. A cold dread ran through Jaeger, wondering what he should expect, if this is how Myrog’s own people fared under his hand. The rough jolting continued until the cart had rolled onto the mercifully smooth surface of the long curving ramp leading up to the keep’s outer bailey. As he passed through the barbican, his eyes were drawn skyward. For a moment, he swore that he’d heard music drifting down from above him. After watching the iron portcullis dropping behind, sealing him in with a chilling finality, he was dragged off the cart and found himself face to face with his red bearded kidnapper again. He looked the prince up and down one more time, checking his cargo was still in a fit state, before nodding to his men. 

“Take him to the depths," he ordered, before marching off to present himself to his master. 

Straight down, deep into the bowels of the keep Jaeger went, strong-armed down endless spiral stairs through the dungeon’s many levels, walls shifting from neatly carved blocks to roughly-hewn bedrock. The groans from each level grew louder and more constant the deeper he was taken, until finally, jerking him to a halt at the last step, his male guards handed him over roughly to two mail-clad young women, crossbows on their backs, who its seemed had been waiting for him at this final dank level. Consisting only a straight corridor leading from the staircase, a row of three wooden-doors, presumably cells, lined the left side, while a single iron door stood alone on the right, with another opposite him at the far end. Torches burned in their sconces beside each, and row of what looked like wooden-topped iron gurneys, leather straps for restraining their occupants hanging loose over their sides, lined up against the left wall near the far end. 

_The Depths_

Three more ladies, these ones portly and grubby-looking, stood waiting for him. Two young and one old. Mother and daughters perhaps, with keys, chains and truncheons hanging from the thick leather belts on their wide hips. One of the younger ones opened the middle wooden door on the left, while the older one gestured for him to be put inside. As he was jostled, Jaeger could hear low groans from the first cell as he passed. A deep, masculine growling, clearly of a man. From the third cell, a light, long sight came, the gender of their maker more difficult to determine. Upon passing the iron door, he spotted a thin line of what looked like natural light bleeding out from beneath it. He quickly dismissed the notion though, knowing how deep underground he must be by now. The female guards stood at the door with the fat old lady between them, cross-bows in hand and pointed at him while the jaileresses stripped him of his plate and cloth. 

_‘Why are they all women?’_ he wondered as they ripped his underclothes off him and switched the ropes on his wrists and ankles for iron manacles. 

Gathering up his armour from the straw-covered floor, they stepped out, leaving the prince standing naked in the middle of the cell, trying not to look vulnerable whilst simultaneously hiding his genitals beneath cupped hands. He still managed to give off an unconscious air of strength and vigour, but the blushes rising on his strong cheekbones countered it, drawing smiles from the helmeted guardswomen. They glanced at each other, one turning her head as if about to say something lewd, but noises echoing from the stairs made her stop. Footsteps and indistinguishable chatter, interspersed with rowdy laughter filled the air for a good half a minute until its source finally arrived at the doorway. The red-bearded man was back, but this time with another, one he stepped aside to let pass.

“AAAAH, so... here he is! My-my very own prince of Kellastria! OOOOHH, and what a fine prince too eh Kalzan?” cried the spectre swaying its way in through the doorway to his younger general. 

Goblet in one hand, lit Candelabra in the other, and with a black iron crown of writhing, intertwined snakes sitting askance on his head, the sweaty, flushed face of Grell Myrog leered at Jaeger. 

_THIS is the great monster?_

Jaeger could almost have laughed. It seemed so implausible. This was no hulking beast of a man. Battle-scarred, eyes filled with savage, evil intent. Tall yes, almost as tall as Jaeger, but even under the layers of thick, crimson, serpent-embroidered garments, stained as they were with drink and the juices of meat and fruits, it was clear to the prince this fellow was not built for battle. Wiry, but for the hint of a little pot-belly, the thiry-something man’s curly copper locks, damp with perspiration, lay matted to his hot forehead. 

“Very fine...,” the tyrant said more quietly, heavy lids widening a little as his sluggish, bloodshot eyes finally gave him a less blurry view of the prince.

It was true, Jaeger was indeed VERY fine. Tall. Painfully handsome. Broad, heavy shoulders. Full, high pectorals. A bursting lattice of stomach muscles. His ferociously tapering waist. Angular, chiselled hips and long, egg-shaped thighs. All of it wrapped in a tight, glossy skin. Unblemished, creamy and glowing in his captor's candlelight.

“A young man’s skin…” whispered the tyrant, absentmindedly.

Myrog took a swig from his jewel-encrusted goblet and, let his gaze wonder all over the resentful, clench-jawed royal. He followed those hairs trailing down from his naval. A little darker perhaps than the burnished gold locks on Jaeger’s head, they all flowed neatly downwards, disappearing under strong hands well-filled by an impressive endowment. Jaeger’s manacles jangled a little as he tightened his grip on them, as if it would ward off that hungry stare.

“I-I’ve heard tell of the men in your family. That your blood runs hot and shhtrong. Makes for men of great size and… v-virility,” he said, drawing a long breath before pushing out the last word.

“I must admit, I-I wondered if it was all just blather, but now... well… _now_.”

His shoulders slumped in lusty defeat.

“I’m ga-glad it wasn’t… very glad."

The tyrant’s phlegmy voice trailed off, as did the incredulous shaking of his head, seeming to lose himself again in the wondrous view. Shifting forward to take in more of it, he rustled the straw with his elaborate cloak. 

True again. Keraano men had always been big and strong. Many of Jaeger’s kingly ancestors had epithets after their names like "The Tall", or "The Mighty", or "The Brawny". By nature everything about Keraano men was bigger, broader and more strapping than most, and they never seemed to want for much exertion to stay that way. His father had broken a leg once when his horse had stumbled on a rabbit hole, and even after a month in a splint was still as burly and barrel-chested as he’d ever been. 

Grell caught the twitch of distaste in the young man‘s blue eyes as they dwelt on the food smearing his front.

“Ah yes, uh heh, I must apologise for my ug-ungainly state,” he said, handing away his cup and brushing half-heartedly at the smears.

“Your arrival has coincided with the end of another rather boit-boisterous evening, heh. One of many this past week,” he said, belching.

“It’s my birthday you see! In fact, yoouuu are here to round off the festivities for me!”

The tyrant leaned in, the wine stench that accompanied his whispers strong enough to intoxicate on its own.

“I fi-I find it’s always best to end one entertainment by dangling the proshpect of the next.”

He grinned at the Prince, his dirty glare now filled with an unnerving enthusiasm. 

_Execution. That’s it, and his whole court’s going to watch._

Jaeger’s face blanched a little at the thought, but he still eyeballed the dictator angrily, jaw muscles dancing.

“Oh, no no! Don’t fear my-my dear prince!" he said, reading Jaeger’s mind again.

"I wouldn’t think of blemishing such… mani-magnificence. No, no, nooo, not for a moment,” the high-born drunk reassured with exaggerated finger wagging, stare still dwelling on the prince’s biggest, curviest and most sinuous areas. 

“That’s the-the trouble with being such a sukesh-sushesh-SUCCESSFUL conqueror you see. People always think the-the very wooorst of me. Think me such a foul beast...” He said, turning to his taller cousin and shaking his head with false offence. 

“Well, maybe I am a little foul,” he grinned, his face lowering with exaggerated shyness.

“But I only use the bush-butcherer's knife when needs must. Although, truth be told, tha-that last battle was more about the spoils… than the war”. He smiled again knowingly, letting the silence hang for a moment before turning with a little stumble to the old jaileress and grabbing back his drink. 

“I’ll-i'll be back tomorrow Mezia. I think I’ll go and sleep off some of the evening’s… excesses.” 

With one last lingering stare at Jaeger’s statuesque form, the drunken apparition and his cousin swept away, taking most of the illumination with them, but at least leaving naked Jaeger the discretion of the shadows.

Water, porridge, and a few hours of restless broken sleep on the hemp-covered and all-too-short stone ledge that passed for a bed were barely adequate for a young hero used to far grander comfort. Still, for Jaeger, the time had flown by all too quickly. He had dreamt of making a heroic escape, cutting down guards all the way up to the surface and bolting away on a stolen steed into the bright sunrise. But it had to give way to the stark damp reality of the cell in which he remained, with only the torchlight shining through the doors barred window onto his bare skin. The jangle of keys roused him groggily, and he looked over his curled up body towards the noise, only to meet the leer of his now-sober captor, near-silhouetted and with a dirty smile. Even though he was lying facing away from the door, his hands still shot back to his groin from where they had slipped during his dreaming. He sat up awkwardly, a creeping discomfort rising in him as he wondered how long the Tyrant had been ogling the back side of his naked body while he was sleeping. 

“Good morning beautiful, sleep well?... I did,” Grell whispered the last two words insinuatingly, his speech far more elegant and flowing than the previous evening. 

It was clear to Jaeger that the tyrant had spent the night dreaming too, mostly about the handsome strapping young noble that was soon to be his newest plaything. The door groaned open and the two younger jaileresses trudged in, taking hold of him under the arms before he could stand, ready to do their master’s bidding. Grell stood in the doorway, taller cousin at his side again, absent-mindedly rubbing his little pot belly, now wrapped in clean, dribble-free blue velvet. Still though he had the ruddy cheeks and glowing nose of a man that knew the taste of wine far too well. 

“I meant what I said you know,” the dictator started, beckoning the women to bring him through as he backed out of the way.

“I won’t harm a hair on your head. No racking, no thousand cuts, no red-hot pokers. No, none of that.” 

The naughty edge in the man’s voice made his assurances ring hollow to the prince.

The iron-doored cell opposite was slowly being heaved open by Mezia as her girls brought Jaeger shuffling into the corridor. 

“Chance has allowed me to follow a much more enlightened, and for me, far more entertaining approach with my guests over the years.” 

Grell smiled as the prince was bundled passed him and into the chamber that lay beyond, a heavy exhalation escaping him as his eyes landed on the pair of high, full buttocks bouncing and flexing beneath the prince’s insanely chiselled hips. 

"Square and round at the same time. The wonderful contradiction that is a warrior's rump," he mused.

Light momentarily stung Jaeger’s eyes. 

Natural light. 

Blinking, he took in the large cell that lay before him. Maybe thirty feet across and perfectly circular, its low ceiling was formed entirely of a wrought iron grid which cast a pattern of bright squares onto the dark stone floor. Jaeger’s hands were torn from guarding his groin and hoisted into the air, his wrist manacles fastened to a loop above, leaving him fully outstretched and only able to put his toes flat to the floor. He squinted up at the sun pouring it’s light on him, down through a long stone cylinder, the walls of which switched from rough bedrock to finely cut stone about a third of the way up. It was one of the shadow keep’s massive corner turrets, he reasoned, completely hollow and rising hundreds of feet above the cell. A strange, iron construction ran ladder-like all the way up the inside wall on one side. Its purpose he couldn’t guess at.

The jailers withdrew, leaving Grell to once again taunt his handsome captive from the doorway. 

“A strange piece of architecture isn’t it?” Grell said, waving his hand around.

“I had the whole west tower stripped out just for this. The accent to the top can be- oh! But of course!, I haven’t explained!,” Myrog cried, turning to his taller cousin, who’s pallid complexion made him do a double take.

“You alright Galzan?” he enquired in a mocking tone, knowing full well the cause of the man’s sweaty-palmed fidgeting. 

“I... I wonder if a might be excused Sire, so that I may, uh, attend t-to my duties,” the formally bullish man stuttered, clearing his throat. 

“What? Don’t want to watch? Oh, very well, you may go,” Grell huffed, dismissing him with a hand wave and chortling at the speed with which his burly cousin fled. 

“Do excuse the general won’t you. He dislikes this part. Brings back too many bad memories. You see, it’s he who acquired them for me in the first place.” 

Confusion flitted across the young prince’s face. 

_Them?_

The corpulent dictator smiled slowly, reading the prince's mind again, his stare slowly moving off him. Jaeger followed his eye-line into the shadows that ringed the room, to one spot on his left. Black rock combined with heavy shadows left him barely enough reflected light to just make out the edges of an arched recess cut deep into the wall. 

“Do you know what a Seed Reaper is?” Myrog asked innocently.

He didn’t, but he didn't like the name.

There was a sinister kind of knowing in the dictator’s expression now.

The princeling grew tense.

The door was shut and bolted, and a large spy slit slid open for Grell to continue his educating. 

“One winter, a few years back, my dear cousin was up in the northern forests for me, raiding the villages there for slaves, whores and so forth,” he explained casually.

“During one particular raid, pretty maiden girl slipped past him and his men. Making a sport of it, he told his men to stay put and decided to snare her alone. Deep into the forest she took him. He never caught her, and on trying to return found he’d gotten himself lost. So, it being late and cold, he sought shelter, spending the night inside a large rotted-out oak. Sensible enough you might think, but unfortunately for him, the hollow trunk was already occupied."

“Jaeger glanced nervously at the grotto then back at the dictator, who's eyes now blazed with a dark excitement.

A sound. 

His head snapped back to the alcove. 

Faint, sharply echoing noises of grit sliding under feet, of hands padding stone. 

“Was dormant up inside the rotted-out trunk. Sleeping there. Waiting months, perhaps years for a chance encounter. Then, once he was asleep… down it came.” 

With his hand, Grell imitated a spider dropping on a thread.

Jaeger stopped breathing. 

He could see something. Light reflecting off his own skin hit upon two barely discernible forms now hovering at the threshold of the cavity. 

“Only a handful of written accounts even describe them you know.” Grell pondered wistfully.

“It’s a rare privilege for us rich and powerful isn’t it? To hold in our possesion rare treasures.” 

Details of the forms began to materialise as they crept out, nearing the grid of light cast on the floor. Man-shaped and crouched almost to the point of being on all-fours, Jaeger couldn't see faces yet, only the tiniest of glints reflected from two sets of eyes. 

“Of course, in the wilds they wouldn’t dream of approaching a fully awake man like this, especially a fine strapping young man like you, and certainly not in the middle of the day. But in their time here, they’ve learned to be bolder.” He smiled, watching them near.

“Simple beasts, with simple minds, but like me, they know exactly what they want... and have the tools to get it.” 

Jaeger’s heart sank as, stooped and hesitant, they crept fully into the light. 

Hairless from head to toe, skin of the palest living colour glowed coldly, like a tapestry long faded, edged with a washed-out blue and stretched so tightly over sharply defined muscles that every sinew could be seen lengthening and contracting with their hesitant steps. Near-naked but for a tatty loincloth hanging on their wasp-waists by a belt of string, they seemed almost human, but not quite. Their semi-animal features unnerved the Prince. Lupine mouths projected just a little more than the normal range of human faces. Noses long and thin but flattened to the face, protruding outwards less than the lips. A single thick vein branched from between heavy brow ridges and out over their bare scalps. 

_Those eyes_

Spheres of molten Tar.

Jet black and glossy with no whites or pupils at all, glaring at him with a base, thoughtless hunger that could freeze the heart.

A few paces from him now, they raised themselves up till almost fully erect, showing their powerful bodies.

One was of Jaeger's height, with a body that rivalled the prince's own, the other shorter, it's own muscular frame thicker-set than the first.

One paced slowly behind him, the other in front, chests rising and falling slowly from deep, full breaths.

Their unreadable, animal stares never leaving Jaeger’s body.

Judging it somehow as they circled.

“Don’t worry my prince, they’re quite gentle, well… relatively speaking,"chuckled the despot.

"And as you can see, I’ve managed to keep them at least half-decent,” his eyes pointed Jaeger to the tatty fabric flapping between their legs. 

“They breed by transforming their prey you know,” Grell muttered, almost in passing.

“I started with one, but now I've got two. Would you like to know how?" He asked teasingly.

"You'll remember of course that i conquered Arakab?"

The small mountain kingdom, who's wealth spilled from its jagged peaks in the form of Iron, gold and gems.

"King Ozma was not much older than you. Fierce, stocky little bull of a boy, and my goodness, he made hard work of that conquest for me.

"He was so defiant, in war AND in captivity, but the Seed-Reaper soon broke that angry stare of his, and made another of itself in the bargain."

Grell nodding at the shorter Reaper arriving in front of the prince after another circuit of him.

He let the silence hang, then drank in the prince's disturbed realisation that the beast now panting and hungry before him had once been a noble ruler. 

"Amazing isn't it, to turn prey into predator."

“I’M NO ONES PREY!” Jaeger defied, barking at the door. 

A lingering pause followed before Grell answered in a soft tone, his gaze just off to one side of the prince’s face again. 

“Don’t be so sure.”

A sudden realization gripped Jaeger that the beasts weren’t in sight anymore. Both had had slipped with a silent swiftness behind him in the second his attention was away from them.

He turned his head awkwardly to see past one thick, upstretched bicep and then the other.

That empty black stare met his again from each emotionless face.

The body language he knew though, he’d seen it before on a thousand hunts. 

A beast preparing to strike. 

Four hands pressed against the skin on his hips and lower back, their coldness making the muscles there shudder.

Jaeger shot a look of outraged panic at Grell, about to demand he stop them, but the wide, unblinking, searingly intense stare that answered him seemed to take his words.

All he could do was pant deep and fast, the slabs and chiselled zigzags of muscle on his outstretched ribcage performing a spectacular anatomical dance for his captor with each hard, stuttering breath. The two things were pressed close against him now, icy nakedness touching his hamstrings, his buttocks, his spine, lifting his Goosebumps ever higher. One face curled around the upstretched wings of his shoulder to his armpit, the other drew close to the back of his head.

A heatless pair of hissing breaths blasted him, one in his thick curly pit hair, another against the back of his ear. 

They drank in his scent, and by the way they moved, it seemed they were searching for something. 

A spot on him.

“I never tire of watching this…” thought Grell out loud at a whisper, his eyes dry.

“That moment… that second b-before they…” His words shuddered. 

The creatures had picked their spots. 

Cold lips mouthed the prince’s skin. One on his neck beneath the earlobe, the other on the thick, blood vessel branched fan of shoulder muscle between arm and ribcage.

Wetness, and the tiniest if pin pricks on his skin, like the bite of a fly.

Rigidity swept his entire musculature. 

He tried to spin himself in his bonds, but they were holding him now with a firm determination, like piglets clamped to the teat. An itch grew under their mouths, growing into a deep heat, like a hundred gnat bites all at once. For maybe a half-minute they mouthed him, jaws unmoving, before Grell finally intervened. 

“Alright, that’s enough,” he ordered nonchalantly, backing away from the door to the jangle of keys. 

Both creatures’ heads spun around hard as the fat old jaileress trudged in alone. They broke away from Jaeger, backing slowly from the approaching woman, afraid. Hissing loudly but resisting the urge to flee. Not wanting to abandon their prey. But a few lazy, fat-armed waves from her were all it took to break their resolve, sending them fleeing back to the shadowy culvert at speed. 

“They don’t like girls,” crowed the dictator, lithely walking in with a toothy smile. 

“I know the feeling.”

Jaeger craned his neck to look at the spot on his shoulder where the lips had been pressed.

Under wet patches of saliva, the skin was pale pink and blotchy, with two pairs of welts, as if he’d been stung. 

“What-WHAT DID THEY DO TO ME?!” he demanded to know, shocked and angry. 

“You’ll feel it in a moment, the venom is quite fast” replied Grell, smiling wryly when the prince’s face dropped. 

_Venom_

His vision blurred for a moment.

He blinked to clear it, but the dictator’s grinning visage kept moving in and out of focus.

His head felt suddenly heavy, and an icy chill seemed to be spreading through his bones. 

“Wha... whaa…” 

He tried to speak, but his throat wouldn’t finish the words, and his lungs refused to provide the breath to make them. 

“Shhh, don’t trouble yourself my beautiful young hero...” Grell whispered, taking the prince’s lolling head in both hands. 

“...such immense beauty…”

He cleared the curtain of golden locks from Jaeger’s heavy eyes, letting the softness run through his fingers. 

“All will become clear… tonight. I promise. Sleep now. You’ll awake a new man.”

Jaeger’s eyes where already closed.

He welcomed the warm embrace of shut lids.

A distant sensation reached him of a thumb tracing one of his cheekbones, and what might have been a kiss. 

One last sentence reached the prince from his captor, echoing from a thousand miles away, before unconsciousness finally took him.

_When he’s ready… send them all up… together…_


End file.
